The Automaton of Second London is now available to download and play!  It has also been submitted to both Spooktober 6 and Monstrous Desires, so it is ready to go when people start checking out those jams' entries.  Since it is done, it is time for a post-mortem.  It might be a little long, so feel free to scroll straight down to the tl;dr part.

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INSPIRATION

I'd been itching to write something Victorian-inspired ever since I'd gone to a Dickens-inspired Christmas festival last December.  People who showed up in costume would get discounted entry, so I had to do some research on the time period to try and put together something fitting (which I did, I went as a humble maid with a mop cap and got my discount).  The more research I did, the more interesting I found the time period.  I wanted to all-in on Victorian style.  But you know me, I also like myself of sci-fi/fantasy.  But all the historical fantasy goes for medieval-esque settings.  Why not something relatively more recent?  Why not a Victorian fantasy?  Not a steampunk - I do not know enough about steam-powered technology to make it work, and I wanted to play with magic after writing so much sci-fi with the Clash series.  How about a magic-infused Victorian setting?  I could do that?  And so, Second London was born.

The automatons have some specific inspirations, as well.  One of my earliest VNs was a romantasy called Kalzrak.  It was originally going to be a Skyrim mod before I realized I didn't actually want to take the time learning how to mod Skyrim.  The VN has since been retired, but the main machine was a sweetheart and I kind of missed him.  If Jack feels familiar at all, it is because he is Kalzrak reborn.  A big part of Jack's character (and something that drives the plot) is that he cannot verbalize and must be taught sign language.  This is a little idea I have held since my introduction to the Transformers movies and wondering why Bumblebee spoke through the radio when a robot speaking sign language would be so much cooler (and a great role model for any little ones watching who also spoke the language).  "Robots signing" has been in my head since 2018 and would not leave, so I pushed it out by writing a plot around the concept.

There's other various sources of inspiration that went into this.  Eyre's design was conceptualized way too close to the Murder Drones finale.  Bronte is my youngest cat combined with, of all things, the lamp from Brave Little Toaster (so if you wonder how she moves, there you go).  Both of their names reference a certain famous novel of the time period - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, which also served as an inspiration for the tone during the more dramatic sections.  Ezra is based on a unicorn folklore I read about back in elementary school - a handsome man with a spiraling horn.  The Halloween hush cake scene is based on two actual Victorian holiday traditions that I found charming (I might make me a hush cake - actually called a 'dumb cake' - this year).  A lot of what I have enjoyed throughout my life combined to create this work, and I think that enjoyment shows in the final product.

DEV CYCLE

This was one of the smoothest dev cycles I have experienced, relatively speaking.  This is great news, considering I have started a new career and my writer's block from Clash: Blue Mirage was starting to really frustrate me.  I ended up getting so caught up in the writing part that the rest of it kind of suffered (more on this later).  This will hopefully carry over when I go back to Blue Mirage in October.

A big area of distress for me is my art style.  I fully expect people to laugh at it and call it "bad."  And frankly, I would agree with people - my art style sucks and repeated practice will not help, I've tried.  But I will say that there is one interesting side effect to the rise of generative AI (of which none was used in this project, please don't jump to conclusions just because I mentioned the forbidden practice) - people are much more accepting of "bad" art just so long as it was made by a human.  By telling myself this, I was able to keep myself from falling to despair.  Also, instead of stressing over my lack of "art", I chose to focus on a "style."  With the sketchy outlines highlighted by the red eyes of the automatons (as well as something else, something spoilery) on dark backgrounds, I was able to trick myself - and hopefully the audience - into thinking I knew what I was doing.

But the best part of my work on this project is the writing.  This was one big, dramatic joy to write!  The great thing about vintage Victorian novels is the drama.  You go read Great Expectations and tell me that's not the best damn soap opera ever created.  Channeling that type of drama into my weird little robot romantasy was so much fun.  It's not perfect, of course - there's a lot I am catching now that could/should be fixed in future revisions but cannot because jam restrictions - but its still a lot of fun.  I really do hope people enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

As for the actual gameplay mechanics...meh.  I brought back Kalzrak's distant/friends/lovers points system, which was a system I really did/do like (although, because I was so fixated on writing, I didn't get to play around with it this time as much as I liked - btw, if you end up with equal points, you are railroaded into the friendship route instead of unlocking an extra route like I usually do).  I was going to have a big investigation sequence that had to be cut (more on cut ideas in the next section).  And the big chase sequence at the end was one I had in mind at the beginning of the project...but in practice, realized it was not as smooth as I'd hoped.  But it was too late to change it; hence, the cheat sheet for anyone who wants to skip past it.  Not because it is too scary, but because it is mayhaps too silly.

CUT IDEAS

The biggest loss the game experienced was the loss of the investigation scene.  You would be able to find clues around the murder scene and combine them to deduce whodunnit, which would then lead to you getting caught and locked in with (SPOILER) who would proceed to tell you exactly what happened.  This part was cut, throwing the player right into (SPOILER) infodumping - not as impactful as putting together the pieces first.

Jack was originally going to be a lot creepier.  He was originally inspired by Spring-Heeled Jack (hence the red eyes and the cape) and was going to be much more like him - including literal springs in his heels.  There would be an entire path of murders leading to Jack and whispered fears of his cruelty, causing the player to wonder if Jack was truly so cruel or if it was a misunderstanding.  As he evolved to be more like Kalzrak, he became less like Spring-Heeled Jack...although (SPOILER) certainly picked up the slack in that department.  Hopefully he is still monstrous enough to qualify for Monstrous Desires.

Arabella's backstory of being a dropout of a prestigious magic college was going to play more into the story.  She would end up discovering she did have a talent for magic after all in order to protect Jack from (SPOILER).  Her backstory ended up paying no dividends in the story, and in fact opens up a bit of a plot hole - if this is a world where magic exists and can be controlled, why is she so dismissive of traditions causing images of people to appear in mirrors?  Needless to say, hints of this still exist in the final product - and probably shouldn't

Also, lots of world-building lore got cut.  Including a figure called the 'Mother of Machines,' who would either usher in peace or usher in the apocalypse.  I wonder why I mention that here...

FUTURE PLANS

The VN - despite desperately needing revisions - is going to stay as it is.  This is because there is so much I want to tell in this setting and with these characters (especially Eyre; I don't play favorites, but she is my favorite) - all of which is limited by the VN format needing visuals and music and all that crap.  So I still plan on expanding this into a romantasy novel.  I've wanted to write and publish a novel ever since I was young, and I do think with proper expansion and revision that Automaton of Second London could work.  I'm already workshopping the world-building.  I'll be writing the book alongside finishing Blue Mirage.  When will it get published?  When its ready.  I will have a page here on itchio that you can follow for progress, and if I can't find any other way to get it published (or if the publishing route I take gives me permission to do this) then I will publish the eBook here.

Will I make any other VNs set in Second London?  Maybe.  For VN development, I still plan on swapping between Blue Mirage and a jam because this did wonders for my motivation; October is a Blue Mirage month and November is going to be my project for a fairy tale VN jam, so maybe a fairytale set in Second London for fun?  Its early to tell.

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tl;dr - game's done so go play it, a lot of different inspiration sources went into it, game turned out good but not perfect, there's a lot of janky parts and straight-up missing parts to the story, I'll fix those parts in the novel.